


When kings are falling down and monsters are ripping our bodies apart

by Akiko_kitsune



Series: Make me crazy, keep me sane [6]
Category: Gintama
Genre: A lot of people screaming at Gintoki cause that's my kink apparently, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt No Comfort, I needed to spice it up a bit, M/M, Phone Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, canon-typical angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-10 01:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20519549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiko_kitsune/pseuds/Akiko_kitsune
Summary: When life forces Gintoki to look back, he notices how many mistakes he might have made and how they affected people around him.





	When kings are falling down and monsters are ripping our bodies apart

**Author's Note:**

> That's probably the most boring part of the series, only Gintoki becoming more aware of how he fucked up many things, but hey, that's important stuff, I guess.
> 
> Sorry for long hiatuses between parts, but the less feedback I have the slower I write and it isn't my first priority projects (since I don't really ship them even). However as we're getting closer to the end of it, I'll try to end it as soon as I can (I want to get free of it)

Gintoki never looked back.

That was his life philosophy. He knew there were too many bodies right behind him to stand if he ever looked back. He couldn't change what was in the past. He could only keep going forward. Sometimes he felt as if the corpses behind him were grabbing his legs. He kept walking. Slowly making his way forward. In his dreams past and present mixed making him go through the nightmares his life created again and again. He kept walking.

There was nothing heroic in that. He felt that it was the only way left for him other than going insane. Zura seemed to do the same and he used to be a smart guy, he should know what he was doing.

Takasugi took a different turn. They felt like they lost him to that darkness that was lurking right behind them. Was it because it grabbed him first? Was it because he fell and they were too afraid to look behind to help him get up again? Or was he just the first of them to give up this race with life? Gintoki prefered not to wonder which one was it.

It was meaningless now. The past catch up to Gintoki. He lost the race. This darkness pushed him on his knees and made him look back. Watch his failures played again and again in his head.

It could be said that Gintoki made three mistakes in his life.

Only three, not that much, huh? He just knew what to screw up to ruin everything.

They also could be phrased differently - Gintoki let Takasugi down three times. It still meant the same. These were his biggest mistakes. He let Takasugi down three times and three times he saw him crash in effect.

First time when he let Shouyou be taken away. Maybe if he fought a bit harder, he could have saved him, kept him with them longer. Yet, he failed. He let go promising his master to take care of their friends.

Takasugi and Zura were the first to find him that night. He didn't even explain what had happened or maybe he had muttered something, he couldn't recall. But he remembered vividly as the understanding of this situation reached Takasugi and broke him. Piece by piece, while he stood quietly unable to move or speak until the realisation of how horrible world they were living in swallowed him whole.

The other students gathered there too. Gintoki didn't know when. He was too focused on Takasugi. He watched him broke like he wanted not to miss the moment when he would physically shatter and disappear, like Gintoki wanted to catch him before it might happen.

Maybe he should move away. It was all his fault. He came into Takasugi's perfect comfortable life and destroy it. Even more, he had just failed him.

“We have to take him back,” Gintoki heard in the buzz around them. The storm of people talking was arising around them and they just stood unable to do anything. Since then they got into the eye of this never-ending storm with no exit.

“We will bring him back,” Gintoki said out loud.

It didn't raise Takasugi's spirit. He only looked Gintoki in the eyes sadly and after a few moments nodded but without conviction.

Was it a bad decision?

The second time was even worse.

Gintoki killed Shouyou. It was... It felt like the right thing to do in this utterly mad world. He kept his promise to Shouyou, he acted according to his teachings...

But.

He broke the promise he gave to his best friend. He acted against his pleas. He made him beg and yet he turned the deaf ear to it. Takasugi's screams were still echoing in his head and it seemed this sound wouldn't leave him alone in the nearest future. He couldn't even look at him again. He failed him.

Gintoki stood with his sword over Takasugi’s body.

He had already freed Zura, but when he came to Takasugi, the fear paralysed him.

He killed his most cherished person. Something like that could never be forgiven.

Zura took his sword, Gintoki didn't even notice that. He cut Takasugi's bonds.

Even when freed, he didn't get up. His only left eye moved slowly and focused on Gintoki. Mercilessly. His lips trembled at first try. He sealed them close. He gathered some strength to speak again. His voice hoarse and quiet, tired out by screaming and begging. “Gintoki... Kill me. You should be able to do that.”

Gintoki almost fell on his knees.

No, no, no, no. It wasn't supposed to be like that. He only wanted to protect them. To protect what they were fighting for...

He failed. He failed so badly.

Mindlessly, he went a few steps away. He turned back to them. He couldn't... He couldn't look them in the eyes.

There was one more face he couldn't look at. He kept his gaze away from it. He even shut his eyes for a moment when he was going past it. How...

How it all could end like that?

He heard as Takasugi fell to his knees. Zura tried to persuade him to stand up, to go somewhere away from this cursed place. But even his hardest attempts to remind calm failed as his eyes were catching on Shouyou's cut down head again and again. The body was taken away. They could try to go for it, to fight for it, but there was so strength left in their bodies and souls.

"We have to go," Zura spoke.

Where?

"Gintoki!" Oh, that one was for him. "Takasugi's hurt, we should..."

Gintoki with difficulty moved his body into motion going back to them. He kept his gaze down. He reached to Takasugi. He expected to be pushed away. It didn't happen. Maybe he didn't have a force to. Gintoki pulled him up and let him lean on his shoulder.

He looked back to Zura to ask where they should go to.

He stood over Shouyou's head. Zura had the biggest experience in taking his shit together and doing what should be done. In faking till he made it. He took the piece of cloth the head was left on and wrapped it around it. To make it easier to carry. To cover it.

They got back to what was left from their last camp. From what was left there Zura tried to treat Takasugi's wound. There wasn't much they could do about it. And Takasugi...

After the wave of shock wore off, Takasugi'd gone mad. He screamed, he banged his head against the ground, he clenched his hands on his own throat until his knuckles knocked white. At least they managed to keep him with sharp things. Otherwise, it would be worse.

Gintoki needed to hold him down when Zura tried to treat him.

When Takasugi eventually calmed down, it felt like everything fell down. Every last piece of sanity and hope they were clinging on fell apart. They were all broken beyond repair. Zura's hands were trembling. He looked at them, then at Gintoki. Hopefully. Madly clinging to the hope that there was at least one out of four generals left standing. He didn't know what Gintoki did. They had all fallen apart.

Gintoki couldn't bare it. So he ran away. He left them behind, he left everything behind.

But that didn't work for long. They all met again. Their fate was beyond cruel. And all to make Gintoki see Takasugi breaking for the third time.

He wanted to save him.

Even if he had to save him from himself.

And that thought led him to the third time he failed him.

Gintoki took his sword and went into a fight knowing it would only end in death. He went in without hesitation. But he didn't expect what he was about to witness there.

Takasugi ended up lying down to his feet. Defeated, humiliated... Dead? If not, then that was only a matter of time.

If anything, Gintoki was sure about one thing – he failed him again. And this time it wasn't one wrong decision. No. He kept constantly failing him for the whole last ten years.

He had never listened to him.

Takasugi joked once comparing that to these Buddist monkeys – Gintoki just chose not to hear evil. He never let him spoke, so he couldn't tell if what he saying was right or wrong. Gintoki chose not to listen, cause it sounded dangerously similar to the part of him that he prefered to stay dormant.

He deprived Takasugi the right of voice because he was too afraid what he might hear, what these probable words would bring.

What could he know? He never heard them. He only supposed that they were the same as the once he was trying to fight off in his mind over and over.

It felt like the right thing to do. Zura was doing the same and he used to be the smart one... They both became idiots fearing too much what was happening in their heads.

Had they picked the wrong side in this story? - that thought couldn't leave Gintoki. Before he never considered it. He tried his best to do the right thing, of course, that he was a lazy bastard, so that had its limits. But now, the situation he was put in, the role he was put in, it felt so wrong. He screwed up. No one had ever screwed up as much as him.

And now he had to face all these mistakes again.

Maybe Oboro was right – it was his karma. Though for Gintoki, it felt more like a boogeyman. Creature sewed from all his nightmares together - Utsuro.

Gintoki wished he could, as he had done with everything, push this case aside and not care about it. Just pass by and never look behind.

He couldn't.

* * *

Takasugi needed help. It seemed so surreal, beyond Gintoki’s understanding. He laughed it off. Cause what else he could do? Were they on the same page? Even if they were, would he be able to save him?

He wouldn’t.

They were all beyond saving against a monster wearing a beloved face.

Afterwards, Gintoki wanted to make it up for his first bad impression. Matako glared at him. Poor girl, she went through to much. And now Gintoki was the one to see her breaking up.

“You?!" she threw not letting him speak even a word. "What are you even going to do?_ You_ want to help? Do you know what you’ve done to him? Do you know how many times you have hurt him?”

Gintoki stayed silent. He could tell she had far more to say.

“You used to be his friend. Maybe that was true, somewhere in the past. But then you left him and never care anymore, didn’t you? Do you know what he had been through these ten years?"

He didn't know.

"How many times do you think we have seen how he was trying to take his life away?"

Too many.

"Where were you then?"

Not where he should have.

"Where were you all these ten years?” She looked at him as she wanted to find an answer to that question. She didn't find it. “Maybe you would go there only to hurt him again.”

* * *

Kiheitai desperately needed help. They would go through hell for their leader. But it didn’t mean the first few steps they weren’t still trying to walk proudly. That led to one more unpleasant conversation, this time with Bansai as Matako had left without waiting for Gintoki to make his mind.

“We don't need your help,” Bansai said dryly on the first impulse.

“The case is,” Sakamoto spoke. “You do need him.”

Bansai looked back at them. He laughed brokenly. “Then we're doomed.”

”Oi, be more appreciative when someone wants to help you, asshole,” Gintoki stopped him.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I've forgotten, you're the hero and the most righteous one here,” he scoffed. "Honestly, I could never understand why you got to play this role. Maybe that’s the perk of playing the bad ones, you can no longer see a hero as everyone is.”

“Seems like Takasugi found himself a bunch of weirdos to much his edginess and I thought that would be impossible,” Gintoki ridiculed it involuntarily.

“You have to laugh everything off not to show what you feel. Especially around us. Why? Because we dared to do what you didn't? But your whole story doesn't add up. How could _Mr Hero_ abandon his friend? Okay, after a few years, you started to drop by, fuck him, no strings attached... But how it makes any sense? So I keep wondering how you are the hero in this story?”

“You would prefer your general to be it?”

“No. I would prefer for anyone to take this role seriously, so he didn't have to do the dirty job someone would take credit for. I don't know who would that be. You, Katsura, Shinsengumi, whoever. Who knows how it all would end. But, one thing we know for sure, don't we? It won't for end pretty for him. He will die somewhere alone in agony, left behind and forgotten." Bansai kept looking into Gintoki's eyes. What he said wasn't shocking. It almost happened just a few months ago and was likely to repeat it nearest future. They were all aware of it.

Bansai put his gaze down. He swallowed his pride, there were more important matters to put his energy on. He spoke only once more. "I used to hope one day, all his pain would be compensated. Everyone just wishes for justice, for some catharsis, don't we? But it seems there is none.”

* * *

This bastard.

He had to make a dramatic entrance. It wouldn’t be him if he didn’t.

Gintoki couldn't help but lightly smile when he saw Takasugi. Alive and well. Looking down on everyone, as always, this fucking...

Gintoki rushed forward into the battlefield. How natural it felt to get back to fighting on the one side. Almost like some bonds were cut off and for the first time since ages, he could move freely.

But there was one thought in the back of his head - it was only temporary.

* * *

They separated. There were too many issues all at once to take care of. But Gintoki could safely put some in the hands of his old friends. So he thought in the heat of the moment.

But it wasn't good old times. They'd changed.

When Gintoki got back to Zura and Sakamoto, he already knew what was wrong. Yet, some part of him prefered to be oblivious. He looked around, he even asked: "Where...?"

"He took off," Zura sighed. "As always. He never stays in one place. We couldn't even stop him. Somewhere during the fight, we got separated and then we got only to see how their ships were taking off."

"Bastard," Gintoki snarled. How could he...?

"And what would you tell him?"

"Huh?"

"If he stayed, what would you do?" Zura repeated. "After all he had done, would you kill him to avenge his actions? After all, we find out, would you speak to him that now we will have to kill our master once more? How do you think either of these cases would go?"

"The less we see him, the fewer problems we have?" Gintoki rephrased. Zura frowned. He didn't want to hear it sounding so heartlessly. But that was what he meant. Takasugi equalled so much trouble that anyone would prefer to avoid it.

* * *

Takasugi didn’t show up in person nor tell them what he was up to. However, something changed. He hadn’t taken everything on himself this time. He sent a few of his men to tell Gintoki and the rest what he had found out. Only bare facts, open for their interpretation.

What Takasugi decided to do when he heard all that?

When leaving, Takechi threw Gintoki something. It was a small communicator. Gintoki tucked it into his sleeve and left it there until he was alone.

He calmed his breath and asked through it: “You’re alone?” It just went into the cosmic ether. It had so much sense as asking it to the darkness and emptiness around him. Gintoki didn’t expect an answer. He sat in silence listening to the light buzz of the communicator.

“Yeah,” he heard a soft voice.

“You okay?”

“I'm okay. You?”

“In one piece.”

Gintoki heard soft chuckled in the answer. It had to be bad if Takasugi acted like that. He involuntary asked: “Everything’s alright?”

“Everything’s a mess.”

“Yeah... But I’m still here for you.”

He heard laughter. He shouldn’t have said that. It seemed like a bad joke.

“Oboro was Shouyou student,” Takasugi’s voice quivered.

“I know. Your guy told us.”

“You don’t know. He... I killed him. He died in my arms. I... I burned his body. I have his ashes with me. I couldn’t leave him there...”

How much Gintoki gave just to be able to be there with Takasugi?

As always he was away when his friend needed him.

There were so many things he wanted to ask him. To find out where Takasugi was standing. On their side, on the other side, or who knows where. Maybe, even more, he would like to ask what the fuck he was supposed to do with all this fucking mess around them.

But he couldn't. He needed to make his mind regardless of what Takasugi was doing. He was never listening to him, he couldn't just start now.

And it wasn't the right moment for all that. Gintoki just wanted to get to him and hold him.

“Takasugi...”

“What's with that tone? You want to get something?”

“I missed you.”

There was only silence left in the answer. It was okay. They were horrible at confessing stuff. In talking in any honest way.

“Just so you know," Gintoki added to tone down his words.

"Do I need to know that?"

"In case you want to do something... There is someone waiting for you. There is probably more than just me, but who would dare to speak up to you?” he laughed.

"You're afraid I do something stupid?"

"You're constantly doing something stupid, lately."

"I know," Takasugi murmured. That was even more surreal. They agreeing on something? They had lived for too long. “I missed you too,” Takasugi spoke. in a faint voice. “While I was asleep.”

"You saw me there?"

"I wouldn't be dragging it for so long if I had seen your ugly face."

Gintoki chuckled. "Right."

"It was peaceful. I hadn't had such peaceful dreams since... Don't know. School probably. Sensei was there. All I ever wanted. I almost..."

_...wanted to never wake up._ He didn't need to say it out loud. Gintoki caught that in his tone.

"But," Takasugi continued. "I had plans to do. There is always something more to do," he sighed.

"Even now?"

"Yeah. It's like the last thing to do, one last thing..." he chuckled softly. "Every time I say something like this it always turns out there is something more. It never ends."

"Good. My life would be too easy without you... Takasugi, I miss our nights too.”

“You have to bring everything down, huh?”

“Tsk, let me. Something gets me every time I hear your voice.”

“Trying to sweet talk me? Nice try, but I don't believe you.”

“You don't want to try this thing? You are always down for all weird kind of plays.”

“And now you’re trying to dare me? You really have to-”

“I missed you.”

Takasugi stayed silent for a moment. “What would you do to me if you were here?”

_Keep you in my arms_ \- that would be too sappy for them, even if that was what every fibre of him wanted to.

“I would fuck you.”

“Oi, you need to be gentle with me, I get out of practice.”

“Okay. This one time. We would get on the mattress.” He heard as Takasugi shifted and went somewhere. ”I would take your clothes off. Slowly. As I kissed your skin. “He heard the rustle of material. “You’re seriously doing that?”

“Do you have to be shitty in everything you’re doing?”

“You can do it if you want to.”

“I can also turn it off.”

Gintoki sighed. “You’re all naked there for me?”

“I’ll get cold if you won’t do anything.”

How much he would give to be there. To warm him with his heat. To caress his fair skin. To kiss him.

And as the body was warmed up and relaxed, he would reach between his legs...

Gintoki tucked his fly open and rested his hand on his cock.

"I would warm you up-"

"How?"

"I would press you to the bed. Kiss you. Touch you. Work my hands across your body, so no place would be left cold."

"I'm not that easy. I would scratch your back."

"I know. I got used to that. I would still go on. Reach between your legs and work my fingers slowly in you. One by one."

"Without rushing in as always?"

"No. This time would be different."

"Because you aren't here?" Takasugi asked.

"You think I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I saw you?"

"No, that you're lazy and you would prefer to get it off as soon as possible."

"... But maybe not this time. We didn't do it in a while. I missed you. I would like to take it slow. I would like to recall every part of you-"

"Why?"

"You would prefer if I go rough on you?"

"No, go slow."

"'kay. I would go as you like me to. Only this one time. I would eat you out as I worked my fingers in. And when you get all relaxed for me, I would put my cock in. You need that, right? You like how it's filling you. You like having it inside you. And you like how I know where to press in you. How to make you tremble under me. All I need is to hit that one place. And I would do that. Over and over."

"Shit," Takasugi cursed as his breath went short.

Gintoki smirked. He knew what that meant.

"Sh... I'll take care of you, " Gintoki murmured. "Don't worry. Hit that spot again. I got you." He heard as Takasugi whimpered. "Just like that. You're doing great." Gintoki was badly catching breath himself too.

When he heard as Takasugi failed to muffle his last moans, he came.

"Shame this thing doesn't let you see the other person..." Gintoki said when their breathing started coming back to normal. "You could have found something better."

"I haven't thought about this use of it."

Gintoki laughed. He played with the object a few times in his hands. He got serious. Why the reality was catching them faster and faster.

"You know I won't keep this thing with me?" Gintoki spoke.

"... I know. You were always shit with technology. Breaking and losing anything Tatsuma was trying us to get... I only guessed you would want to talk."

"How?"

"You came. You came to save me," these words barely made their way out way out throat. "It's unusual for us."

"So you wanted to keep acting unusual?"

"Who knows..."

* * *

After saving the Earth, Takasugi disappeared.

If there was no corpse, therefore he was still alive.

And yet, he was gone.

Again, he went where Gintoki couldn’t follow him.

**Author's Note:**

> In my opinion, that is the worst part of the series. I can only promise the next two parts will be better. If you want to nag about anything, I'm open for criticism


End file.
